analyzed him constantly during the past six months, probing for any hidden factors that might make a space flight futile, fearing perhaps a mental return to the womb for a security that could not be found in untraveled space. We're all children when it comes to space, he reminded himself, and he laughed and wondered half-seriously if he were really as psychologically free as he thought he was—excepting his animal allergy of course, which was insignificant. There were many facets of the human mind the clinical instruments of psychology could never hope to touch; the mind was like an iceberg, and the submerged nine-tenths could hold a great many unfathomables hidden in the vast depths, subtle monstrosities waiting to spring out and claw at his sanity.

He smiled grimly, as he realized where his thoughts were leading him. To fear of the unknown again. Of course, it was only the intellectual contemplation of it, but the mere thought disturbed him, and he began to feel angry at himself for allowing the thoughts to exist at all.

Irritably he jabbed at the controls and felt the reassuring thrusts that drove him gently into the heavy-padded cushions of the seat. With a smile, this time of satisfaction, he watched the speedometer needle rise to a new height. Below him, Earth was an unfamiliar blur, and he touched off the braking rockets to look at it.

The landscape took on more familiar features, with its surface pockmarked by the ravages of wind and rain, its broad fields stretching out in all directions like the fur on some great animal. He failed to suppress a shudder of disgust at that last thought. He'd be glad to get off Earth, onto the moon where he would be alone for awhile and away from the unpleasantnesses of ordinary life. These past months, with Jarvis and his dogs, the psychiatrist's incessant questioning—

The radio said into his ears: "Okay, Cantrell, that's enough of a workout. Bring her in and report to HQ. Colonel Enders wants a word with you."

"Right," Cantrell said into a microphone. He switched off the radio and muttered: "Damn Colonel Enders. What's he want this time, to check the nipples on my beer bottles?"

Angrily, he flipped the rocket into a soundless dive that reached screaming proportions as he entered heavier atmosphere. The outer metal glowed, and the temperature rose in the controlroom. He twisted the rocket onto a tail of flame and settled.

"And that's that—until tomorrow," he told himself.

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